After her team swept Montana on Sept. 24 as she hit .529 with no errors and had six blocks, the middle blocker decided to really cut loose.

She allowed herself to smile.

Michelle Franz and showing emotion go together about as well as oil and water. Franz is the Hornets silent assassin slipping in and out of games seamlessly, playing almost as if in a trance ?” more poker face than passionate.

“I’m a really shy person,” Franz said. “I don’t like to celebrate, it’s just not what I do.”

“I find her hard to read a lot of times,” Sacramento State coach Debby Colberg said. “All the things that get players noticed, she doesn’t do.”

Franz has earned two consecutive Big Sky Player of the Week awards on Sept. 19 and 26, and is quietly leading the Hornets in hitting percentage with a .332 mark.

“She’s crafty,” Colberg said. “She just does a lot things instinctively well.”

Franz ?” a native of Carmichael ?” began her volleyball journey in the Sacramento area. For four years Franz dominated the nets of the Capital Athletic League for Rio Americano high school and is the last player not named Ali Daley to earn Sacramento Bee Player of the Year honors.

Current Sac State assistant coach Ruben Volta recalls coaching Franz as an assistant at Rio Americano when she was a freshman.

“She had pretty much the same personality then,” Volta said. “I would do things like tell her I was going to put her in at setter just to get her to react.

“She would just look at me with a blank look on her face.”

After four years with the Raiders and playing juniors for Delta Force and High Voltage, Franz committed to play at Oregon State. Though the Beavers weren’t a contender, Franz said she chose Oregon State because of the next-level competition of the Pacific-10 Conference and so that her father ?” a Christmas tree farmer ?” could see her play.

Franz said lining up across the net from the likes of Emily Adams and Jennifer Harvey ?” both All-American middles ?” conditioned her to a high level of play.

But just as it appeared her volleyball career was off to a shining start, dark times at Oregon State nearly ended it.

After just one season with the Beavers, Franz sought and received a release from Oregon State and came home, doubting she would ever play volleyball again.

“I didn’t get along with the coaches, instead of teaching us they just punished us if we ever did wrong,” Franz said. “It just wasn’t fun anymore.”

Franz would spend the next year working and attending community college while living with her parents.

It wasn’t until she and her family entered the Hornets Nest last September to watch Lynae Mulder ?” a club teammate of hers ?” play for Charlotte in the Sacramento State Invitational did the possibility of picking up the ball again seem real.

“We were sitting in the stands and kept seeing the (Sac State) coaches look up at Michelle like, ‘What’s she doing here?'” Michelle’s mother Kathy Franz said.

After the match Volta approached the family and invited Michelle Franz back the following day to talk about the possibility of playing again.

“On the second day of the tournament, I talked to Debby for the first time and she offered me a scholarship,” Michelle Franz said.

Following an official recruiting trip Franz officially accepted the Hornets offer last November.

“I wanted it to be fun if I were to play again,” Franz said. “I wasn’t going to go away again, it was here or nothing.”

When Franz arrived for preseason practice in August she found another roadblock. She hadn’t picked up a volleyball in a year and a half.

“I couldn’t get off the ground,” Franz admits. “I just wasn’t in volleyball shape.”

“We thought we might lose her,” Colberg said. “I remember looking at Ruben and saying, can she hit?'”

Over the following month Franz answered that question, shaking off the rust and earning a starting spot by the seventh match of the season on Sept. 4 at Houston. It was that match that Colberg inserted senior Natalie Melcher at setter, shifting Shannon Arts to the right side making room for Franz in the middle.

She hasn’t disappointed.

A sweep of Houston that night began a run of 10 wins in the Hornets last 12 contests.

Franz’s fellow sophomore in the middle, Lindsay Haupt, believes that her demeanor has permeated throughout the team.

“We’re working so much better as a team,” Haupt said. “We’re not feeling as much pressure.”

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John Parker can be reached at [email protected]